Kingdom Entrepreneurship
Introduction
“Repent, for the kingdom of heaven [God] has come near.”
Jesus, Matthew 4:17
The kingdom of God (as it is called in Luke) is not just “within us;” it is within our grasp. It is composed of presence (the king), people (followers of Jesus and regents), and places. The kingdom was the master thought of Jesus. He used the term more than a hundred times in the four Gospels. It was the subject of all of Jesus’ parables and even of his didactic teaching in the Beatitudes. And most significant of all, Jesus claimed in his one sentence sermon in his home synagogue in Luke 4:21, following the reading of Isaiah 61 (that chapter describing the kingdom of God in terms of human and creational flourishing), “Today, this scripture is fulfilled in your hearing,” referring to the words and works of Jesus in Galilee. What in fact is the kingdom? It is the rule of the sovereign (Jesus as king) and the response of people and places (including the marketplace), like a magnet and iron filings. It was the subject of his first teaching, as recorded in Matthew, and of his last teachings while on earth, as recorded in Acts by Dr. Luke (Acts 1:3), and almost everything in between through his teaching and healing work. It is critical to our understanding of entrepreneurship. How could we have missed it?[1]
The church is not quite the same as the kingdom.[2] The church is an outcropping of the kingdom, like the exposure of strata (bedrock, gravel, sand and top soil) in the side of a hill that has been cut through to make a level highway, revealing visibly through the outcropping a sign that there is more than can be seen to the human eye. But the kingdom which includes the church is somewhat hidden, like yeast in dough, salt in meat, and seeds planted in soil. The kingdom of God is God’s new world coming, in part now and fully when Christ comes again—the “now” and “not yet.” The kingdom of God is mixed into the world whereas the church is gathered out of the world, an ecclesia [called out]. The church misses its missional calling when it tries to bring in the church rather than bringing in the kingdom. And it does the latter, in part, through the dispersed life of the people of God Monday to Saturday. But the kingdom is truly beautiful.
It is beautiful to experience because the world is no longer split in two: direct church-related ministry performed by pastors, evangelists and members of God’s people who think that by so doing they are “doing the Lord’s work,” and now a non-split world with work in the marketplace, the business, the school, the medical clinic, the trades, the arts, the church, and the home is also “doing the work of the Lord.” So how can the church (the gathered people of God) bring in the kingdom? First, through our witness in word and deed. Second, by our whereabouts, where God has sovereignly placed us in neighbourhoods and workplaces and places of leisure. We are an influence, unconsciously and consciously, an influence in bringing in the kingdom. But third, we bring in God’s rule through our work. “The church in God’s plan,” says Howard Snyder in The Community of the King, is more than God’s agent for evangelism; it is, in submission to Christ, the agent for God’s entire cosmic purpose.”[3] And what is God’s “cosmic purpose”? According the Old Testament scholar Bruce Waltke, God commissioned Adam and Eve in Genesis 1:28 to “rule” which Waltke says is tantamount to saying “I am asking you to bring in the kingdom of God.[4] And we do this partly, even largely by our work. But what constitutes kingdom work? Is it true, as Leland Ryken asserts, that “any job that serves humanity and in which one can glorify God is a kingdom job”?[5]
What is Kingdom Work?
Essentially it is two things: first, it is good work, and second, it is work that is done God’s way. Good work improves human life, creates new wealth, brings well-being to people, embellishes human life, alleviates poverty, stewards the earth, invites and welcomes Christ’s life-giving rule in the lives of people, and engages the powers that are resistant to God’s coming shalom. Good work does not use people as tools. Good work is work one can “get into” and good work is limited by Sabbath; it cannot be 24/7. What makes work kingdom work and pleasing to God is not the religious character of the activity but the fact that it is done with faith, hope and love. Such is good work. But work done God’s way involves working by the values and virtues of the kingdom of God.
Values are cherished ways of behaving. Dredging mainly the Gospels we find a score of kingdom values: forgiveness and accountability, integrity in word and deed, fairness and justice, extraordinary service, boundary-breaking behaviour, stewardship, empowerment of others, shalom and joy.[6] These values are salty. Values are cherished ways of behaving; they have no opposites (you have your values and I have mine). Virtues, which are engrained character traits, have opposites: vices.
The Beatitudes reveal the virtues of the kingdom of God (as suggested directly by the first and the last beatitude). So my friend, David Gill, rephrased the Beatitudes (Matthew 5:2-12) to suggest how kingdom virtues could positively affect the marketplace.
(1) openness and honesty (Blessed are the poor in spirit)
(2) accountability and responsibility (Blessed are those who mourn)
(3) freedom (Blessed are the meek)
(4) ethics and excellence (Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness)
(5) mistake-tolerance (Blessed are the merciful)
(6) honesty, integrity and transparency (Blessed are the pure in heart)
(7) collaboration and integration (Blessed are the peacemakers)
(8) courage and persistence (Blessed are those who are persecuted).[7]
These were presented as values for a division of a large company with deep appreciation. Someone asked, “Where did you get these?” Such is kingdom work. But what makes a business a kingdom company?
What Are Kingdom Companies
A kingdom company exists to glorify God in all that it does and to that end embraces multiple bottom lines: people, planet, purpose (expressed in kingdom values and virtues) and profit. These points are understood and agreed upon by all of the company’s significant stakeholders. The business leaders understand that the kingdom of God is more than, though not less than, soul salvation. They view the kingdom of God as wholistic (integral), the dynamic rule of God in all of life: spiritual, social, personal, economic and cosmic. Thus a kingdom company integrates kingdom values and virtues into its corporate life, its service and product development, its relationship with customers and with civic responsibility. The same is largely true for a not-for-profit.
A kingdom not-for-profit seeks to bring God’s shalom into an area of society that may be a people group, an occupational or educational sector (such as a university), health care providers or a people group with specific needs. This agency will establish God’s kingdom through bringing health, well-being and personal renewal, whether spiritual, social or physical, or all three.
So people working in kingdom companies or kingdom entrepreneurs live and work in the certain hope of the final triumph of God’s reign, even though in this life they may fail. They do not assume that God is working with them in everything; but neither do they assume that God is not working with them to advance God’s kingdom. They take seriously Psalm 127:1 “Unless the Lord builds the house the builders labor in vain. Unless the Lord watches over the city, the guards stand watch in vain.” They are working with the Lord, for the Lord and even in the Lord. But following Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s poignant reflection on this Psalm, in which he affirms that God builds for eternity, what may seem to have been “in vain” in this life may in the new heaven and earth, be seen not to have been in vain and literally will be seen to have more than survived the final transfiguration of the universe, people and even some of their work.[8] So for the Christian entrepreneur the line between “secular” and “sacred” is substantially erased. Dualism is dead, or largely so as people seek to live and work seamlessly. All things from remuneration or dealing with difficult customers are within God’s sovereignty. They see “doing God’s work” as broader than church work. And they necessarily hold together social justice and evangelistic witness. They are establishing a genuine business, not a front for evangelism, and not only in a cross-cultural context.
Mortimer Arius, the South American theologian, wrote “We are not sent to preach the church but to announce the kingdom.”[9]
Jesus meant that the kingdom cannot be ensured by faithfully observing rites and ceremonies in the Temple of Jerusalem, as the priests and Sadducees claimed; it cannot be earned by strictly observing the law and its rabbinic interpretations, as the Pharisees taught; it cannot be secured by fleeing from the world to a secluded life of ‘purity’ as the Essenes attempted; it cannot be conquered by the piercing swords of the violent rebellion against Rome, as the Zealots pretended. The kingdom of God comes as grace, and it has to be received as a gift. It can, however, be lost by presumption.[10]
So what does it mean to be involved in kingdom mission as an entrepreneur?
Exploring Kingdom Mission in the Marketplace
While the term “marketplace” generally connotes a for-profit business it can be applied to any social situation in which exchange takes place, whether it is an exchange of values, money, goods or services. Thus not-for profits can be marketplace enterprises, families and family run businesses and even the church is, in a sense, a marketplace. So the marketplace is almost everywhere. And since the coming of Christ everyone in Christ is called of God to be “with him [Jesus] and to be sent out” (Mark 3:14). Not everyone is called to be a preacher or teacher but we are all called to be witnesses, to be an influence and to work. But we are also called to engage in God’s mission, and to that we must now turn for there are many serious misunderstandings of what actually constitutes God’s mission. One is that it is a strictly human activity undertaken through human enthusiasm. Another is that God’s mission is defined by what we see “missionaries” doing. A third is that it is exclusively fulfilling the great commission (Matt 28:18-20) and not the creation mandate (Gen 1:27-8). So we need a short primer on God’s mission.
God is on mission. It is called missio dei (from the Latin word for “send”). It is not simply a human activity. God who is lover, beloved and love itself is also a sender, a sent one, and is sending. In the gospel of John there is sending within God and by God more than 31 times. God is always going outside of God’s self reaching out to his creation and his God-imaging creature in love, healing, renewal and transformation. God’s mission actually began in creation with his command to take the sanctuary (the Garden, a place of beauty, safety and prosperity) into the world and so “fill” the world with his glory and with God-glorifying people and God-glorifying stewardship of creation (Gen 2:15). But when the time was right God came himself, so loving the world (yes the world) that he sent his only Son that whoever believes in him might not perish but have eternal life. Jesus was and is an expression of God’s mission. Stephen, his early follower, was not only the first Christian martyr but was in a sense the first missionary because as he spoke to the Jewish Sanhedrin he saw a vision of the resurrected and ascended Jesus at the right hand of God. But the name he gave to Jesus was “son of man,” that enigmatic title Jesus assumed from Daniel 7:13-14 which pointed to the One who would receive the loyalty and devotion of all peoples and nations. And so Stephen was the first to see the more than Jewishness of Christ’s kingdom, and Saul-Paul, who held the cloaks of the people who stoned Stephen to death, was undoubtedly influenced by Stephen’s witness.
So there are three mission commissions in Scripture: the great (Matt 28:19-20), the greater (Luke 4:18-21) and the greatest (John 20:21). The greatest is this: “As the Father has sent me, I am sending you,” with all the resources of the triune God in a fully incarnational mission. This means that God’s mission is wholistic, to the souls of people, to whole persons, to the thought-forms that influence how people think, to the cultures of institutions that motivate people to act and work in particular ways, to economic systems and governments, and finally to the creation itself through environmental stewardship. And God’s mission is not yet finished! So what does it mean for us to engage in God’s mission?
First, it means that we are called to invite people to meet the King and to become followers of Jesus. That is usually a process and a long one in which people who have begun to follow Jesus as disciples, sometimes long after, actually become born again and through which, according to Jesus in John 3:3 and 3.5 they will be able to “see” and “enter” the kingdom of God. At which point they will be hugged by the Holy Spirit or as Paul says in Romans chapter eight that when we cry Father (Abba) “the Spirit himself witnesses with our spirit that we are God’s children” (8:15-16). But there is a second way we engage in God’s mission. It is simply to bring in the kingdom through our work in the world. The marketplace is critical to this both as a mission “field” and as part of God’s mission itself.
As a mission field the marketplace is well known, especially by the Business As Mission community. There are the obvious advantages of access, a relational context, sheer time spent there, the issues and values that are raised by enterprise, and proximity to people in crisis and need. But the marketplace itself is part of God’s mission, part of what God wants done on planet earth to reach people and places in need. The medieval Christian Thomas Aquinas spoke of seven corporal (or bodily) almsdeeds and seven spiritual almsdeeds (loving acts to a neighbour).[11]
To feed the hungry
To give drink to the thirsty
To clothe the naked
To harbour the harbourless
To visit the sick
To ransom the captive
To bury the dead.
But is this not what is being done by those who work in the food industry, beverage industry, clothing and design, hospitality industry, medical services, police and military, and the funeral business? Aquinas further stated that there were seven spiritual almsdeeds.
To instruct the ignorant
To counsel the doubtful
To comfort the sorrowful
To reprove the sinner
To forgive injuries
To bear with those who trouble and annoy us
To pray for all.
Taken together the bodily and spiritual almsdeeds are really what constitute our kingdom ministry in the marketplace! So the marketplace is both a mission field and mission. But how can kingdom entrepreneurs actually engage in God’s mission?
Summarizing, mission practice involves four possible engagements. (1) The kerygmatic (proclamation) role; (2) the diakonic (service) role (serving people in need, enhancing human life, relieving poverty, healing and renewal); (3) the koinonic (community building) role (building the faith community-church-planting, and building the human community). It is interesting that the word for “company”—com-pani—is composed of two phrases that together mean “shared bread”; and the prophetic (discernment) role (recognizing sin, calling the marketplace to justice, engaging the principalities and powers).
Can we do kingdom mission in a non-kingdom company? Of course, at least partly. Can we do kingdom work in a non-kingdom business? Yes, but it will not be easy and we will need to make peace with the proximate, to quote the subtitle of a forthcoming book.[12] Can we be a kingdom entrepreneur in a non-kingdom company? Yes, but it will be even more difficult and will require the wisdom of God to navigate the expectations of other leaders and your own.
But there is a question that remains: what kind of spirituality will make this possible?
The Spirituality of a Kingdom Entrepreneur
Referring the book of which this chapter will be a new one[13] we noted that an entrepreneur is someone who innovates, looks for and seizes opportunities, gains personal satisfaction through innovation, does risk analysis, and develops entrepreneurial habits. In chapter four we dealt with the soul and spirituality. Then in chapter five we noted that human beings have a capacity for God-inspired creativity. Further in chapter seven we explore finding your calling and vocational discernment. But now I would like to explore how our spirituality affects our capacity to do these entrepreneurial actions and practices in all these spheres.
First God the Holy Spirit guides us even in vocational choices. Paul is a classic example of this. In the Acts we read how Paul was constrained by the Spirit to enter some risk situations, such as carrying the love gift from the Gentile Christians in the Roman world to help the poor disenfranchised Jewish believers in Jerusalem. He affirmed that he was doing God’s will even when his “spiritual” friends tried to dissuade him (Acts 21:4, 11). In Acts 20:22-24 he says that “compelled by the Spirit, I am going to Jerusalem, not knowing what will happen to me there. I only know that in every city the Holy Spirit warns me that prison and hardships are facing me. However, I consider my life worth nothing to me; my only aim is to finish the race and complete the task the Lord Jesus has given me….” In other situations he was constrained by the Spirit not to enter an “open door” (Acts 16:7). That led to his subsequent vision of a Macedonian pleading with him to come over to help them, which led to the kingdom-church expanding into Europe.
So how does the kingdom entrepreneur sort out where God wants him or her to work, what opportunity they might choose among the several they see, and what risks are foolhardy? The answer is very challenging: by “keeping in step with the Spirit” (Gal 5:25). And how do we do this? By praying continuously and becoming sensitive to the nudges of the Spirit. God is not silent but speaks to us, as we indicated in chapter seven where we dealt with calling. There we noted that Teresa of Avila offered three ways that God speaks to us. She calls them “locutions.” But significantly she offers three tests as to whether we are hearing from God or our own imaginations (or worse still the devil): they must agree with Scripture; a great consolation and peacefulness comes over us; and these words do not go away quickly. Some never do.
God speaks to us about life, not just how we are to lead a church Bible study. God gives us wisdom not just for church work but also for our daily work. God does not give guidance. That is in the ancient world called “divination,” a mechanical means of determining the will of the gods or God. God through the Holy Spirit is our Guide, pure and simple. And God inspires us with creativity as he did to Bezalel the craftsperson in Exodus 31 who was filled with the Spirit to design and work in all kinds of wood, metal, fabrics and gems. Bezalel was the only Old Testament person of whom it was said that he was “filled with the Holy Spirit.” Now that Christ has come, died, been resurrected, ascended to heaven and poured out his Spirit on every believer, all followers of Jesus are being filled with the Holy Spirit. We cannot have two-thirds of God in us (Father and Son but not the Spirit), but God can have two-thirds of us! So Paul in Ephesians 5:18 literally says to the Ephesians to “go on being continuously filled together with the Holy Spirit.” Why continuously? As one famous pastor put it, “I believe in the filling of the Holy Sirit. But I also believe we can leak!”
Second, critical to being a creating creature, as Dorothy Sayers describes us, is the discipline of continuous joy, continuous prayer and continuous thanksgiving, the famous “always” trilogy in 1 Thessalonians 5:16-18: “Rejoice always, pray continually, give thanks in all; for this is God’s will for you in Christ Jesus.”[14] Let us treat them one by one.
“Rejoice always.” This is critical for the perseverance needed to be a kingdom entrepreneur.
The Orthodox theologian, Alexander Schmemann wrote, “Of all the accusations against Christians, the most terrible one was uttered by Nietzsche when he said that Christians had no joy.”[15] How could this be? Joy is the inheritance, the mark, of the person in Christ. The good news of the kingdom of God and the coming of the King begins and ends with joy. And there is a lot of joy in between, between the outpouring of the Spirit at Pentecost and the final appearing of Jesus again. “Joy to the world” was announced by the angels to the shepherds in Bethlehem. For the joy that was set before him Jesus endured the cross (Heb 12:2).
Drawing on Paul’s pithy statement about the kingdom in Romans 14:17 Miroslav Volf and Matthew Croasman say, “For the kingdom of God is not a matter of eating and drinking [whether believers should eat meat from the idol meat market, for example], but of righteousness, peace and joy in the Holy Spirit.” Righteousness, they say, is “life going well in circumstances; peace means life led well through agency; joy in the Holy Spirit is life feeling as it should, affectively.” Joy is being in the kingdom of God and having a sense of divine well-being in our emotions and spirit.[16]
Obviously joy is something more than happiness. Joy is not circumstantial. It is a divine infusion of well-being. It is not just joy in good fortune, or joy in completing good work, but joy in God, as Nehemiah encouraged the returned exiles who were weeping and mourning as the priest Ezra read out the law. “The joy of the Lord is your strength” (Neh 8:10), so affirmed Nehemiah. A classic non-circumstantial example of joy is found in Habakkuk 3:17-19. Canon Stanley Evans, a British churchman, once said, that the Christian is a “controlled drunk purposively intoxicated with the joy of the life which is perpetually created by God himself.”[17] “Rejoice” is found 72 times in the New Testament and “joy” is found 60 times.[18] But the first word, re-joice, like re-fuel, re-fit or re-store suggests that we have something to do with it. We are repeating joy or renewing joy or recalling joy. Rejoicing is critical for perseverance.
“Pray continually.” Prayer is essential for continuing creativity.
Kingdom entrepreneurs need to be in constant contact with the source of creativity, namely the living God through the Spirit. What we need is not a “prayer life,” that is a life with seasons or periods of dedicated prayer. What we ultimately need is “a life of prayer.” Scripture points to that. 1 Thessalonians 5:17 offers in older translations: “Pray without ceasing.” But there are other verses. “Be… faithful in prayer” (Rom 12:12). “Pray in the Spirit on all occasions with all kinds of prayers and requests” (Eph 6:18). “Devote yourselves to prayers, being watchful and thankful” (Col 4:2). And then there is the Lord speaking directly: “Jesus told his disciples a parable to show them that they should always pray and not give up” (Luke 18:1).
I simply recommend going to God frequently with thanksgiving, with petitions and with worship—as continuously as possible, as did Brother Lawrence in The Practice of the Presence of God. This little book was given to me, my first Christian book, after I experienced the waves and waves of liquid love on the night I became a child of God. That was ten days before I entered McMaster University. In the men’s residence there were a few followers of Jesus, very few, but they heard that I was one of them and invited me to a half hour of prayer and Bible reading after supper each night. So, I was privileged for the first three years of my Christian life to have daily fellowship, something Dietrich Bonhoeffer prized in his underground seminary. And one of my friends in Edwards Hall gave me Brother Lawrence, The Practice.
Lawrence was the chef in the kitchen of a Carmelite monastery in the seventeenth century. He worked in the clatter of pots and pans, in the hubbub of a hot kitchen, answering calls for food, and fielding complaints. But the brothers would be upstairs praying while Lawrence was downstairs working. They would come to him and ask how he knew God so well, since he was working, while they were upstairs performing the liturgy, as they would say “doing the work of God” (opus dei). But, it seemed to them that he knew God better than they. Lawrence replied:
The set times of prayer were no different from other times…. My greatest business does not divert me from God…. I simply go to God through everything I do…. The shortest way [is] to go straight to him by a continual exercise of love and doing all things for his sake. [Before I undertake a task I say to God,] ‘I cannot do this unless you enable me’…. [If I make a mistake, I say to God], ‘Lord, I shall never do otherwise if you leave me to myself; it is you who must hinder my falling, and mend what is amiss….’ That it is a great delusion to think that the time of prayer should differ from other times.[19]
P.T. Forsyth in his pithy but delightfully evocative Soul of Prayer has a chapter on “The Ceaselessness of Prayer.” In this he comments “Let [your prayer] be closely relevant to your real situation. Pray without ceasing in this sense. Pray without a break between your prayer and your life. Pray so that there is real continuity between your prayer and your whole actual life.”[20] The “how” we are to pray will come as we continue to pray. The Psalms are full of everyday life, emotions, work and gifts. The Reformer John Calvin called the Psalms “an anatomy of all the parts of the soul.” He said, “There is not an emotion of which any one can be conscious that is not here represented as in a mirror. Or rather, the Holy Spirit has here drawn … all the griefs, sorrows, fears, doubts, hopes, cares, perplexities, in short, all the distracting emotions with which the minds of men are wont to be agitated.” [21] Prayer is essential for creativity. God will give new ideas, new vision and new directions for the kingdom entrepreneur.
“Give thanks in all circumstances.” This is critical for contentment.
Entrepreneurs, especially serial entrepreneurs, tend in their creativity to move too quickly. I (Paul) have done that. In Philippians Paul says “I have learned the secret of being content whether well fed or hungry, whether in plenty or in want” (4:12). When I first read this I thought “I think I have learned the secret of being discontent!” But the secret of being content is found earlier in the chapter, in verse six where Paul says to pray with thanksgiving. “In every situation , by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God” (4:6). Destroy your discontent with thanksgiving. Francis Schaeffer in True Spirituality proposes that there are two tests of the spiritual life.
First, in regard to God: I am to love God enough to be contented, because otherwise our natural and proper desires bring us into revolt against God.... The second test as when proper desire becomes coveting is that we should love men enough not to envy, and this is not only envy for money, it is for everything....[22]
Why give thanks?
For one thing thanksgiving is practice for heaven. For who but believers would want to go to heaven if God in the new (really renewed) heaven and renewed earth is everywhere and in everything. That situation will be life, work, play and even food consumed at the Wedding Supper of the Lamb with constant thanksgiving and worship. But who would want to be there that unless they loved and thanked God in this life? After one rivelling vision after another John, the author of the Revelation pictures “loud voices in heaven” joined by the twenty-four elders saying, “We give thanks to you, Lord God Almighty, the One who is and who was, because you have taken your great power and begun to reign” (Rev 11:17). In the new heaven and new earth we will be constantly thanking God for creation, re-creation, for making us more fully human through resurrection, for the full coming of his kingdom and for “the renewal of all things” about which Jesus spoke while he was in Palestine (Matt 19:28). But if the last book of the New Testament pictures constant thanksgiving, so does the first book, the book of Genesis. For there, Adam and Eve were called to lift up their whole life and their life in the world as a thank-offering, a eucharist (from the Greek). “And Adam,” notes Alexander Schmemann quoted earlier, “when he left the Garden where life was to have been eucharistic—an offering of the world in thanksgiving to God—Adam led the whole world, as it were, into darkness.”[23]
We also give thanks constantly because we are not autonomous. Thanksgiving is the essential spiritual posture of the person in Christ. It is at the centre of our calling. Why? Because when we give thanks we are admitting we are not independent. Thanksgiving is our heart-felt dependence on God. And Paul adds, “in all circumstances” (1 Thess 5:18).
In Romans chapter one the Gentiles, although they knew all along there was a God, did not revere him or give thanks to him… with the terrible consequences of God “giving them up.” The passage begins with “The wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all the ungodliness and wickedness of people” (Rom 1:18). The wrath of God is not God “losing it” in a temper tantrum, but it is God with a heavy and broken heart allowing people to experience the results of their own choices. So, three times in Romans one Paul says God “gave them up or over” (vv 24, 26, 28) to experience futility in their thinking, base sexual relationships, and even gossip and murder. In fact, as we learn in the final book of the New Testament the wrath of God is beautiful.
“For this is God’s will for you in Christ Jesus.”
Rejoicing, praying and giving thanks are simply ways of presenting our whole bodily life to God as a living sacrifice which is our spiritual or proper worship. And this is the will of God for you, for me and for all kingdom entrepreneurs.
The epigram at the beginning of this chapter was Jesus’ first sermon in Matthew: “Repent for the kingdom of heaven is at hand, within your grasp.” Why do we need to repent to see and enter the kingdom of God? What does it mean for a person wanting to be a kingdom entrepreneur to repent?
When I was a late teen and a new follower of Jesus, a freshman in university, my pastor, Dr. Emlyn Davies, came to speak to the daily chapel held at McMaster University as we were preparing for a campus mission. He said something I have not forgotten even though more than sixty-five years have passed since I first heard it. “You don’t want to repent, do you? You will, when you meet Jesus.”
References:
[1] For an extensive treatment of God’s and our initiative in bringing in the kingdom of God and in particular the church’s role in bringing in the kingdom see R. Paul Stevens, The Kingdom of God in Working Clothes: The Marketplace and the Reign of God (Eugene, OR: Wipf & Stock, 2022).
[2] For a more detailed exposition of this see chapter 13 of Stevens, The kingdom of God in Working Clothes, 152-61.
[3] Howard Snyder, The Community of the King (Downers Grove: InterVarsity Press, 1978), 55.
[4] Bruce K. Waltke, Genesis: A Commentary (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2001), 218.
[5] Leland Ryken, Work and Leisure in Christian Perspective (Leicester: InterVarsity Press, 1987), 136.
[6] Matthew 18:21; 5:37; Acts 5-6; Luke 17:7-10; 5:27-31; 19:11-27; Ephesians 4:11-12; Matthew 22:11-39; Philippians 4:4.
[7] David W. Gill, “Eight Traits of an Ethically Healthy Culture: Insights from the Beatitudes,” Journal of Markets & Morality, Vol 16, No. 2, 2013: 615-34.
[8] Dietrich Bonhoeffer, My Soul Finds rest: Reflections on the Psalms by Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Trans. Edwin Robertson (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2002), 11.
[9] Mortimer Arius, Announcing the Reign of God: Evangelization and the Subversive Memory of Jesus (Eugene, OR: Wipf & Stock, 2001), 118.
[10] Ibid., 17.
[11] Thomas Aquinas, “Treatise on Faith, Hope and Charity”, Summa Theologica, Part II of second part, Q 32, art 2)
[12] Steven Garber, Hints of Hope: Essays on Making Peace with the Proximate (forthcoming).
[13] Richard J. Goossen and R. Paul Stevens, Entrepreneurial Leadership: Finding Your Calling, Making a difference (Downers Grove: InterVarsity Press, 2013), second edition to ne entitled Entrepreneurship: A Christian Perspective.
[14] The following is found in enlarged treatment in the “Epilog” of R. Paul Stevens, ed., Working Blessedly Forever, Volume 3: The Spirituality of Marketplace Theology (Eugene, OR: Wipf & Stock, 2026).
[15] Alexander Schmemann, For the Life of the World: Sacraments and Orthodoxy (Crestwood, NY: St Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 1988), 24.
[16] Miroslav Volf and Matthew Croasmun, For the Life of the World: Theology that Makes a Difference (Grand Rapids: Brazos, 2019),17, emphasis theirs.
[17] Quoted in Kenneth Leech, Experiencing God: An Invitation to Christian Spirituality (San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1980), 103.
[18] William Barclay, Flesh and Spirit: An Examination of Galatians 5:19-23 (London: SCM Press, 1962), 76.
[19] Lawrence, Brother. The Practice of the Presence of God: Being Conversations and Letters of Nicholas Herman of Lorraine, trans. from French (Westwood, NJ: Fleming H. Revell, 1958), 19, 19, 20, 17,17, 26.
[20] Peter T. Forsyth, The Soul of Prayer (London: The Independent Press, 2016/54), 64.
[21] John Calvin, Commentary on the Psalms, trans. Rev. James Anderson (Grand Rapids: Baker, 1996), Part 1, Vol 1, xxxvii.
[22] Francis A. Schaeffer, True Spirituality (Wheaton, ILL: Tyndale, 1971), 9, 13.
[23] Schmemann, For the Life of the World, 18.
